The era is an interesting choice for a novel, and while the dialogue can veer into cliche, it is heartening to see a broader set of themes and periods tackled by this new generation of African writers.

Plotting is Thompson’s forte – she deftly handles a thread in which Nate and Kitty solve clues from a decades-old treasure hunt, and her drip-feeding of details about Gary’s nastiness and Kitty’s tragic backstory had me rushing to turn the page. Less successful are Thompson’s dips into magical realism.

For all the power of the book’s data and charts the reader may remain unconvinced that inequality explains everything bad, and greater equality explains everything good, about happiness levels in different countries. Reducing inequality, nonetheless, seems like a good idea.

...in its portrayal of power structures, it is part of those very contemporary political conversations. It is also a beautifully written and compelling story of how families fall apart and of what remains in the aftermath.

These are surprisingly illiberal themes for Dorfman, a public intellectual and admirable human rights advocate, but he doesn’t appear to have thought out their implications. Much of “Darwin’s Ghosts,” including its plot, its characters and its storytelling voice, would have benefited from more thought.

Some readers might be surprised to hear a neurologist echoing Keats’s criticism that Newton stripped nature of its poetry by reducing the rainbow to a prism. But if O’Sullivan was more clinical it’s doubtful she’d be such a fine writer.

If Walsh can do small, he can also go large and he finishes his finely tooled biography by squaring up to that old question of whether Debussy represents the end of one musical epoch or the beginning of another.

The delightfully off-speed Alaska lore—the authorities offer two free nights in jail for information about the missing snowblower—is supplemented this time by a compelling portrait of a female Alaskan governor too monstrous to be anything but wholly fictitious.

Behold, America is an enthralling book, almost a primer for the ferocious dialectic of US politics, inspired by the events of 2015/16. It will no doubt take an influential place on a teeming shelf of Trump-lit.

Guest author Jeff Pearlman obviously went searching for stories that would create some impact with the reader, and he has succeeded. This version of the annual collection, which comes with different editors each year, becomes one of the most powerful in the history of the series.